Week in Samoens

 Lovely week to Samoens to check on the apartment. It’s a pretty town

The biggest part of the ski area is Flaine, but with Samoens and some other villages it makes up the Grand Massif are. Amazing views of Mong Blanc

Flain has some very retro features. This is  lift you stand in, you have to run after the cars and jump in, and step out back wards. Love it!

Poppy’s 11th birthday was while we were away, here she is buying some cheese to celebrate

Tines canyon

Wood anemone seen on a walk

Mont Blanc

Better view of the retro lift

Enjoying the cheese Poppy bought in the market at the apartment, the view is ok!

I love this shop. Grangers, so much cool stuff

Amazing walks by the apartment

The Alps are really big!

Never seen so little snow this time of year!

 I’m putting these here so in other years where it gets a bit thin we can remember how much worse it could be!

More snow needed!

It’s been lovely sunny weather for a few days, and before that a lot of rain. Both of which have been hard on the snow cover. Pretty, but we need more snow!

Here is Poppy doing her best snow dance…

Samoëns for a bit of extra skiing

 Visiting the apartment in Samoëns after our local ski area closed.

The Alps are BIG. The Grand Massif is a lot bigger than our local ski area (The Grand Tourmalet)

We left our place in the snow which was unexpected for the time of year and a bit stressful! The poor animals weren’t expecting it and we are still hoping for one more lamb.

Some snow on the way, but roads good. We arrived at the apartment all covered in snow too. Lovely!

Mont Blanc in the background

Samoëns village

Lots of lovely snow!

You can see Mont Blanc a lot. It is so big!

Super groovy lift in Flaine. 50s? 60s?

We ate a lot

Drank qsome

Low down didn’t stay snowy for long and we had a bit of rain. But up higher still plenty of snow.

View from the apartment car park 

Cool dudes

You can see that pointy mountain from just about everywhere in Samoëns.

Our apartment is in the left hand building looking in to the garden in the middle of the development

On the funky Flaine lift. You have to run after it to leap on and step off backwards.

The cheese sellers in Samoëns market all gave Poppy lots of cheese rind (and some real cheese!), making her 10th birthday her best day ever!

Walk to a waterfall on a wet day when the ski area was closed (due to wind)

Stocked up on the local (Savoie) white wine. Yum!

Pizza from the very convenient little pizza kiosk a minute from the apartment

We need to do a bit of work to freshen up the apartment as nothing much has been done to it since it was built in 2005

We are planning on adding a terrace to make the outside a bit nicer as well as updating the kitchen and bathroom. But not until next year.

Here’s Doug modeling the Samoëns t-shirt I made for him. Should have done one for Poppy too!

Skiing on sand

The ski area has gone a rather unattractive brown colour due to lots of Sahara sand being blown up this way and they getting washed out of the air as it snowed then rained.

Perhaps it is nice and exfoliating for the skis!

Little bit of new snow

It has been a strange year for the snow. There were a couple of very early storms that closed the road to the ski area for days on end. That was before Christmas, since then we have had a little snow hear and there, but otherwise very dry. 

This has meant a lot of lovely piste cruising, but not much powder and terrible conditions of piste. Nice to have a tiny bit of fresh, enough to make the off piste quite pleasant at least…

Never gets boring

 We’ve been skiing at weekends with the ‘crowds’ more than some years because of my work.

Compared to the Alps though it isn’t so busy, we have just been spoilt over the years expecting solitude.

Ski Boot Adjustments

 Skiing is less dun with sore feet

New high taxh tool. The plastic is heated with a hot air heat gun and this is clamped on to creat a bulge where you need more space.

You can’t really see, but the right one has been expanded at the base of the big toe. Doug has done some more drastic adjustments on his boots…